Taking a break

Summer has gotten a little crazy and I've found myself busy with a few other projects, so I will be putting this blog on hold for a while. I know you're all crying inside, but rest assured I'll bring it back at some point in the future. Date TBD.

Link of the week

Another link from NPR.

This really has nothing to do with writing, or it has everything to do with writing since it's basically about humanity and earth and all of life. I liked the article, the Carl-Sagan-narrated animation, and the prospect of a new portrait of earth.

A word link and a small update

First, here's a link to 12 famous writers on literary rejection. Makes me feel much better about my own work and my own rejections—and much more encouraged to keep trying. Just what I needed this week.

As far as my own writing goes, I'm working on some small revisions on LITTLE SUN. Just a few tweaks, really. I also had one teenage reader get back to me, and she told me she read the book twice in two weeks! That's a pretty good sign.

Also, I have another project I'm just starting on that is kind of exciting. It has helped me remember that I do, in fact, like to write. I had nearly forgotten. Anyway, it's very fun, but I'll have to write more about it later, as I'm not quite ready to divulge any specifics yet.

This SNL skit is not the same story line as my book.

But it's strangely close. And also humorous.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/489151?playlist_id=1031&asset_scope=all

Word Link For the Day

Here is a delightful link I recently came across:

18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style

Love them all, but I was particularly tickled by the mental picture I got of "groak" and the ideas of "tyromancy." And "Englishable." So good. I also geekily loved the names of the books they got these words from. I would totally be proud to be the author of a dialect and speech book.

One thing I thought was missing from this list, however, was sample sentences. But maybe that's what we're here for. I'll try a couple and then you join in, if you want.

Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them 

As I wiped the ketchup from my mouth, I looked up to see her groaking at me with eyes as big as hamburger buns.

Tyromancy: Divining by the coagulation of cheese 

A believer in tyromancy, the old crone considered the curdles, gasped, and then shrieked, "You are the harbinger of death!"

Now that's some good writing.

Harry Potter News: How did I miss this?

I don't know where I've been, but for all you Harry Potter fans, I'm sharing this lovely little link to an interview J.K. Rowling did a few years ago (that I only found out about recently) about what she thinks happened after the epilogue. So fun to see how she thought our old friends ended up.

Then I saw this link from NPR the other day about J.K. Rowling telling Harry Potter back stories — and that's when I knew I needed to post about Harry. There are more details when you click on the link above and when you click on "interactive project" below (which I confusingly got from the first link), but I loved these tidbits they included:

"An interactive project at The Guardian lets you scroll through the annotations online. Among other revelations, the notes on a first edition of Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stoneshow that the original Hufflepuff mascot was a bear, not a badger, and that Quidditch was invented 'in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend.'"

Also, p.s., I love Book News from NPR. The end.

Writing some new proverbs

I don't normally post about my daughter very much on this blog, but we had a recent occasion to do something somewhat literary, and I think it's worth mentioning. I gave Anna the first half of several proverbs and had her come up with her own endings, and it proved to be delightful. I posted about it on my other blog, so take a look if you wish.

Good Reads

I just got an email from Good Reads, so I decided to update my status a little bit . . . since the last time I had been on there was September of last year. And before that, I'm pretty sure my status showed that I was "currently reading" a book about parenting a toddler since 2009. And how many books do I have on my e-shelves? A piddly 14. So yeah. I'm not so good at keeping it current. I like the idea behind Good Reads (as far as I understand it), I just don't keep it updated all the time. Do you do Good Reads? Do you like it? What do you like about it? Let's discuss.

Also, as a tangential p.s., check out 32 photos that will make your stomach drop. I don't LOVE heights or doing anything hugely risky, but I can appreciate a picture of someone else's crazy feats—right here from the comfort of my chair that is sitting on even ground. These pictures are pretty cool and pretty crazy. But the cliff camping ones? Really? Is that the best idea or even necessary? I'm pretty sure you could just climb 20 more feet to get to the top of the ledge and to a flat area and put your tent there for the night.

Word Geekery and Other Randomness

A few interesting bits in the world of words, lately:

• This post from Jim Romenesko about a memo from the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, telling reporters to stop using the word "iconic" because it has become cliché.
    
• And how the memo spurred this post, which details a list of overused words and phrases that the Washington Post's Outlook section is supposed to avoid. Fascinating and funny and reminds me of the time I worked at a newspaper (probably because I regularly used a handful of those words).
    
• This list of contronymns was also going around: 14 Words That Are Their Own Opposites. Also fascinating. (Should "fascinating" go on my overused list? Perhaps.)
    
• And for a little bit of fun (on the off chance anyone didn't think the previous items were riveting), I also came across this list of 50 Great Rory-Lorelai Exchanges. I posted a bit about Gilmore Girls on the other blog recently, so this came at a good time. I also enjoyed 25 Little-Known Facts About 'Gilmore Girls' I found on the same site. You might be wondering what this has to do with words, but Gilmore Girls was great writing. And it was funny. So there.

88 Books That Shaped America

Last fall, I saw an article in the newspaper about an exhibition from the Library of Congress at the National Book Festival featuring 88 books that shaped our country. It was a fascinating list, such a potpourri of topics and a refreshing change from the top 100 literary classics or top 50 YA fantasies or whatever booklist has been making the rounds lately. Nothing against those lists (as I love all books—almost), but it was nice to see a mix and to consider how each might have influenced our culture.

Also, I loved seeing books like Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day, The Cat in the Hat, and Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures right there alongside Moby Dick and Leaves of Grass. Awesomeness.

I also love to read book lists and scour them for books I have read, which makes me feel all smart and stuff. (Yes, I cut this list out of the newspaper and highlighted the books I had read. I'm that big of a geek.) This also gives me ideas for books to add to my To Read list. So for your reading pleasure, I posted the list below; peruse it and see what you think. Just for kicks, I bolded the books I have read and put a star next to titles I had read parts of. Because that totally counts for something. 

88 'Books That Shaped America'

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain (1884)

"Alcoholics Anonymous" by anonymous (1939)

"American Cookery" by Amelia Simmons (1796)

"The American Woman's Home" by Catharine E. Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1869)

"And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts (1987)

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (1957)

"The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)

"Beloved" by Toni Morrison (1987)

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown (1970)

"The Call of the Wild" by Jack London (1903)

"The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss (1957)

"Catch-22" by Joseph Heller (1961)

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger (1951)

"Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White (1952)

"Common Sense" by Thomas Paine (1776) *

"The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" by Benjamin Spock (1946)

"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1980)

"A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible" by anonymous (1788)

"The Double Helix" by James D. Watson (1968)

"The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams (1907)

"Experiments and Observations on Electricity" by Benjamin Franklin (1751)

"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury (1953)

"Family Limitation" by Margaret Sanger (1914)

"The Federalist" by anonymous (1787) * maybe?

"The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan (1963)

"The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin (1963)

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway (1940) *

"Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

"Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown (1947)

"A Grammatical Institute of the English Language" by Noah Webster (1783)

"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck (1939)

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

"Harriet, the Moses of Her People" by Sarah H. Bradford (1901)

"The History of Standard Oil" by Ida Tarbell (1904)

"History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark" by Meriwether Lewis (1814)

"How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob Riis (1890)

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie (1936)

"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg (1956)

"The Iceman Cometh" by Eugene O'Neill (1946)

"Idaho: A Guide in Word and Pictures" by Federal Writers' Project (1937)

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote (1966) (Does watching the movie Capote count?)

"Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison (1952) *

"Joy of Cooking" by Irma Rombauer (1931)

"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair (1906)

"Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman (1855) *

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving (1820) *

"Little Women, or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy" by Louisa May Alcott (1868)

"Mark, the Match Boy" by Horatio Alger Jr. (1869)

"McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Primer" by William Holmes McGuffey (1836)

"Moby-Dick; or The Whale" by Herman Melville (1851) *

"The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass (1845)

"Native Son" by Richard Wright (1940) *

"New England Primer" by anonymous (1803)

"New Hampshire" by Robert Frost (1923)

"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac (1957) *

"Our Bodies, Ourselves" by Boston Women's Health Book Collective (1971)

"Our Town: A Play" by Thornton Wilder (1938) (I've at least seen it performed. Does that count for something?)

"Peter Parley's Universal History" by Samuel Goodrich (1837)

"Poems" by Emily Dickinson (1890) *

"Poor Richard Improved and The Way to Wealth" by Benjamin Franklin (1758)

"Pragmatism" by William James (1907)

"The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D." by Benjamin Franklin (1793)

"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane (1895)

"Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey (1912)

"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

"Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" by Alfred C. Kinsey (1948)

"Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson (1962)

"The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats (1962) *

"The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)

"The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner (1929) *

"Spring and All" by William Carlos Williams (1923) *

"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert E. Heinlein (1961)

"A Street in Bronzeville" by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)

"A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams (1947) *

"A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America" by Christopher Colles (1789)

"Tarzan of the Apes" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1914)

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee (1960)

"A Treasury of American Folklore" by Benjamin A. Botkin (1944)

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith (1943)

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) *

"Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader (1965)

"Walden; or Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau (1854)

"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes (1925)

"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak (1963)

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum (1900)

"The Words of Cesar Chavez" by Cesar Chavez (2002)

Book Club Party Time

So tonight was my friend's book club discussion about LITTLE SUN. Remember how absolutely excited I was? That's why this post gets four excitement stars. (Plus, they're just fun.) Anyway, tonight was so amazingly fun. And probably, in part, for very dorky and possibly egocentric reasons, but I don't really care. I'm still riding the high.

Tonight was the first time this book club had an author attend their discussion, and they were very interested in the writing process. And, frankly, it was fun to talk about. How often are people super interested in something you've done and ask questions and let you talk about it for an hour and half? Maybe that happens to you all the time, I don't know. But tonight it was awesome.

They wanted to know how long it took me to write, how I came up with the idea, if I had to map out a floor plan of the main character's house (yes, yes I did), among other things. My friend who was hosting also mentioned that they like to make some kind of food and try to tie it in with the book of the month somehow, and she had us guess what she made. People were tossing out ideas and it was fun to hear how familiar they were with the book, and I also realized how much I wrote about food. But she didn't choose any of those dishes. She made a dessert called "Death By Chocolate" because death is a major theme in the story, obviously. I totally, geekily loved that.

It was also so fun to really discuss the book, what things meant, different themes, what people understood from it, and how they imagined the characters. I learned A LOT, and I have ideas for some changes to make it better. And like I said, it was so fun to talk about it with people who were so familiar with the story. They knew the characters almost as well as I did, and that warmed my heart.

They were also curious about the publishing process and where things stand. After I told them, it made me want to get more queries out there and to keep trying. I've taken a long break, but I was motivated to get back at it.

The whole experience was thrilling, and it made me excited to be an author and proud of what I had done. Best of all, they seemed to genuinely enjoy the book. An evening very well spent.

Mediocre March

So yeah. The title says it all. Mega March did not go as planned. I knew my goals were lofty, but wow. I so didn't get as much done as I thought.

But that doesn't mean I did nothing. I did more research and organized my research notes (which was awesome), I outlined the first couple of chapters, and I even spontaneously wrote half of the first chapter one night. So that's something. I haven't sat down and pumped out a night of writing like that in a while, and it was fun to remember what it feels like. It IS fun, and more ideas come as I go. I need to remember that when my ideas start to run dry. I feel like it's been so long since I've really worked on LITTLE SUN that I don't remember how to do it anymore. But this half chapter reminded me.

So all was not lost. But there's plenty more to do. Here's to Awesome April.

What have I been reading lately?

So much on this blog has been about writing, obviously, but a huge part of my writing life is reading—or what I like to call "research." (Mostly I read because I like it, but sometimes I do it to learn.)

Lately, it seems like my interests have been kind of random, but I've had a good run over the last few months and have read several I could easily recommend.

Crispin by Avi. A three-book YA series set in medieval England about a poor, orphaned peasant boy who's on the run. Much of the story happens with him running and hiding in the forest—several forests—starving and cold. After reading this for a while, I got so I was loudly encouraging him to steal and plunder. I just felt so sympathetic. And I slept so much better the night I read that he found a brand new set of clothes on a dead man and stole them. He was finally warm. Avi had me at The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, which I haven't read since I was maybe 12, but I remember absolutely loving it then, and Crispin was fun too.

Extraordinary Knowing by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D. My dad handed me this book one day and told me I should read it, in case there was anything in it I could use for my book, and I totally appropriated a line from the prologue soon thereafter. I did tweak it, so I don't feel as guilty... But the whole book is fascinating. It's about "anomolous knowing," or knowing something but not having any rational reason why. It discusses ESP, telepathy, government "remote-viewing" experiments (where they had people with these special gifts legitimately finding out classified information for them), and how scientists grapple with these ideas when there is real proof. Some of the medical accounts were especially interesting—doctors who knew special ways to help people but were scared to tell anyone about it because it wasn't "scientific." So interesting to read about this from a scientist's perspective. I really liked the writing—it was indeed sciency but still very readable.

The Summer I Learned to Fly by Dana Reinhardt. This was a fun story about teenage adventure and friendship. The main character's father had passed away and she finds an old journal of his, a book of lists, and one of my favorite parts is how this is the way she comes to know him. Very fun. It was clever and a quick, enjoyable read.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This one was great. Some heavy themes and some offensive language, but the writing was especially amazing and made me envious on several occasions  It was one of those where you say, "That's such a cool way to say that!" on nearly every page. I learned a lot about dual perspective (and a lot from the author interview in the back, actually), and it has one of the craziest non-linear but sort of linear timelines ever. The way the story unfolds is as clever as the story itself.

East by Edith Pattou. I'm not normally a huge fantasy reader—and, honestly,  I think of it as more of a fairy tale rather than fantasy—but I LOVED this book! It's a retelling of the Norse version of Beauty and the Beast, where a girl falls in love with a polar bear. *** Disclaimer: Whatever you do, do not watch a film version of the fairy tale because it is free on Netflix and you have read the book (The Polar Bear King) to your daughter because it is WEIRD. And campy and dubbed and pretty awful. *** But back to the book. I just thought it was a fun story and quite a page turner. A serious page turner. And those are just good fun, sometimes.

So what have YOU been reading lately?

Word News

A couple interesting things in the world of words happened recently. First, March 4th was National Grammar Day. I know you were probably all out celebrating, but I came across this post on Cake Wrecks and was nerdily delighted by it.

http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2013/3/4/grammar-geeks-unite.html

Also, the use (or misuse) of the word "literally" has always been an entertaining point of discussion, so I found this Slate article rather interesting and wanted to share.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/03/06/literally_definition_has_changed_over_the_years_dictionaries_recognize_this.html

And in case you were wondering, my goals for March are coming along horribly, thank you very much. (I should note for future reference to not make such lofty goals and then leave town. The goals did not fare so well that week, but I sure had a good time.) But all is not lost! There are still 10 days left in the month! That's enough time to get something done . . .

Mega March

So with the holidays, several bouts of sickness all around me and in me that needed attending to (don't worry, I won't go into the tuberculosis details again), and life in general, my writing has sadly been put on the very back burner over the last couple of months.

But I have big plans. I have renewed dedication and want to announce that this month will heretofore be known as MEGA MARCH. I'm excited about these plans on their own because I'm excited about my ideas, but I also know that I accomplish almost nothing without a goal or self-imposed deadline. So it's time to get down to business.

This month I will . . .

• Outline my next project (the first book in a middle-grade series that I will write more about later).
• Complete research for said project (it's set in 1910 for reasons that are somewhat elusive to me, but I think it's meant to be this way).
• Write the first five chapters.

Those are lofty goals, but at least working toward them will help me make some progress—any progress—which will be a lovely change of pace from absolutely nothing.

Also, in VERY EXCITING NEWS (I had to include the excitement star because this is so amazingly awesome), a friend's book group, of their own volition, is reading Little Sun this month!!! And I get to attend their book group meeting in April and discuss it with them!!! I am EXTREMELY EXCITED, as you can see by all the caps and exclamation points. Can't wait for that. I'll let you know how it goes.

A laugh for today

Maybe some of you saw this list being posted here and there last week, but it made me laugh and I wanted to share in case you missed them:

8 New and Necessary Punctuation Marks 

We Desperately Need

It's hard to pick a favorite. The sarcastices are something that I've discussed at length with friends, how we need some kind of mark to show when we're being sarcastic so people don't get the wrong idea. The editor in me appreciates the hemi-demi-semi colon. The example on the Andorpersand made me chuckle, and the Morgan Freemark is just awesome. So pretty much I like them all. 

When the planets align

When I was finishing up the first draft of LITTLE SUN, I knew it still needed something. Since I had never written a book before, it took me a while to realize that, to begin with, I was a fairly bare-bones kind of writer. I wrote generally what happened and that was about it, kind of like a very thorough outline in prose form with some dialogue. I needed to add what often makes a book a book—the imagery. So one of my tasks was to go back through each chapter and flesh it out a little and describe this and that, sometimes what people were wearing, sometimes what they were doing, sometimes a look they had on their face. I don't like too much description, especially about the scenery or anything too flowery, but you need just enough so the picture you are painting is more easily imagined.

It was about this time that I started reading a book called The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff. It tells the story of Adam and Eve, God, and the serpent and all they go through in the garden, mostly from Eve's perspective and from a very different angle. There were a lot of things I didn't like about the story (one being how the serpent is Eve's mentor), but there were several elements I found fascinating. One in particular was how the author portrayed Eve's first experience with everything. The minute I opened the book, I felt caught up in the description and like I, along with Eve, was experiencing what it was like to feel and see and have a body for the first time.

“The Beginning” 

Something heavy on my center, smooth against my skin, shifting very slightly within itself, stretched and retracted, occasionally a tap to the side, always in the same spot. I breathed. Instantly the thing was still. I let out the air. Again I inhaled, deeply, and pushed against the heaviness as I filled my chest. The thing began to move. Slowly, stopping and starting, it wound back and forth across my thing, around my knee, down my leg. it slid over my ankle, passed gently by my heel, with a little touch to my instep along the way. There was a wish. Again, silence and dark. I felt light, unburdened, empty, as if I might float away. Soft things swept my face, my cheek, my ear, wafted across my nose. My hands rose from my sides and brushed them off. There was a tickle in my nose. I gasped, gasped again. A great noise burst from my mouth. My eyelids jerked open. And I saw. 

At first there was only blue, limpid and luminous, stretching wide above me. A white, fluffly mass appeared, scudded across the expanse, tumbled into pieces, and melted into the blue. I lifted my arms, spread my fingers. light came through them; the ends glowed pink. I curled a finger into my palm and felt it scratch the skin. On my arms fine hairs glimmered in the sunlight. Still lying flat, I turned my head to one side. Not far away several forms, tall and dark and topped with green fluff, stretched toward the sky. Scattered around me and floating through the air were weightless bits of pink, turned up around the edges: blossoms falling from trees; it was one of them that had tickled my nose.... 

That first day, of course, I didn’t not know it was the sky I saw, the wind that moved my hair, an apple tree that shed pink petals on my toe. Cloud, face, blossom: all were unknown. I had no knowledge, no words. Each time I turned my head and found, before my eyes, something I had not seen, the world expanded.  

From The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff

Anyway, the planets had aligned and it was perfect timing to read something with excellent imagery. Even though this kind of writing isn't really my style, it still helped me learn just when I needed it. Not only does reading something like this give you good ideas about new techniques and all that, but once you do it enough or become entrenched in it, it helps you start thinking that way, and the process comes easier and more natural. 

Kind of like how I felt like my humor reached new heights when I watched all 10 seasons of Friends back-to-back while nursing during Anna's first year. Maybe my time could have been more productively spent, maybe not.

Literary paradigm shifts

Now that I begin to type this post, I realize the title may be a bit misleading. There's really nothing too drastic I'm going to discuss here, but it sure sounds exciting, doesn't it? Anyway, I've recently been thinking about a few times when I saw film versions of books I had read, or vice versa, and realized I was pronouncing or imagining how words were spelled totally incorrectly. (And, interestingly, all of my examples are British. Maybe it's just an accent thing.)

We all remember Hermione from Harry Potter, don't we? I'm pretty sure I read the first few books pronouncing her name like "Her-mee-un," which was my own interpretation. Even after I read the book (Book 4? Book 5?) where it points out how to say it, it still took me a while to change over.

Then I read Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility a couple years ago, after having seen the movie numerous times. I thought one of the main characters' names was Edward Ferris because that's how they pronounced it in the movie. But when I read the book, I saw that his last name was Ferrars. I seriously read for a few chapters, trying to figure out where Edward Ferris had gone and who this Ferrars guy was.

And then I saw the recent production of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit. (If you haven't seen it, watch it now. Do it.) It's about a man who is in a debtor's prison, which they called the "marshalcy." That's how I saw it in my head, anyway. Because, you know, marshals have to do with the law and policing and stuff. But when I read about the story (because I haven't actually read the book), I saw that the name of the prison was called The Marshalsea. It was a total paradigm shift, for me, realizing that it was a proper noun.

It's weird when this happens. These weren't earth shattering experiences, but they definitely changed my views about things in these stories that seemed pretty cemented in my head. Has anything similar happened to you?

Unbroken: A Review

So I finally got on the boat (got on the bandwagon? caught the boat that I missed?) and opened the copy of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken that has been sitting on my shelf in my proverbial "to read" pile for many, many months. I don't know what took me so long. So many people recommended the book to me, but I also knew it was going to be a difficult read, content-wise, and I think maybe I just wasn't ready to jump right in to a long story of suffering, violence, and cruelty.

And I was right. It WAS a difficult read. Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was a bombardier during WWII. His plane crashed in the Pacific and he lasted 47 days on the water, only to be captured by the Japanese and sent to several horrible, awful POW camps where he was starved and beaten and continually hunted by a certain maniacal Japanese guard.

It's a gripping story, but I also feel like I had to read it while keeping some distance—skimming over especially difficult parts, purposely not fully processing the extreme brutality of it all because I didn't think I could handle it. I couldn't believe real people acted the way they did and that kindness and compassion were so rarely seen. I had to keep telling myself that I know he survived because we have this book as proof, but I eyed the pages left with wariness, knowing that they meant the suffering continued.

So yes it was challenging, but I'm so glad I read it. Besides the cruelty and suffering, the name of the book tells the real story. Despite all he goes through, the main character survives and his spirit remains unbroken. I just read a passage that basically sums up the major theme of his time in the prison camps: "The Pacific POWs who went home in 1945 were torn-down men. They had an intimate understanding of man's vast capacity to experience suffering, as well as his equally vast capacity, and hungry willingness, to inflict it." But even so, he survived. He survived unbelievable thirst and starvation and sharks and disease and cruelty.

There have been many beautiful parts, like when Louis is floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean for days on end with sharks constantly circling and, dying of thirst, he prays for the first time in his life and it rains. And he prays two more times, and it rains two more times. Or like when he and his fellow crew member enjoy a brilliant sunrise on the water that they know was a gift from a compassionate divine being. Or like rare kindnesses shown by a few compassionate guards. And many others, which I won't ruin here in case you haven't read the book yet, but I was grateful for the hope they offered. Though these experiences ravaged Zamperini and so many others, it is a wonder to read about what the human body and spirit can endure.

This story is especially touching because Anna's great-grandfather, who passed away last month, also flew on bombing missions in WWII and was the lone survivor when his plane crashed over Germany. He too was a prisoner of war and overcame incredible odds to escape and make it home. Reading Unbroken made me want to read the book about Grandpa Joe's experience again, which is called A Distant Prayer. It's pretty amazing, and he was an amazing man.

Double Fail

I know I missed last Thursday and this post isn't going to be anything amazing, but I couldn't help but post something for my own peace of mind. Last week, life happened and it was a little crazy busy, and then this week I seem to have contracted TB. More than anything, I just need to lie down and not speak or move so I don't upset my lungs and end up in a coughing fit. My throat hurts and, surprisingly, my abs hurt from all the coughing. I feel like I'm in a period movie and need a handkerchief (or kerchief, rather) to cough into, and with every cough, I half expect it to be bloody. I know that's gross, but that's what happens in these movies, and I have accepted my fate.

The upside to this racking cough and head cold? I'm heavily involved in another Korean drama, and two days ago, I could hit the C below middle C. Now that's amazing.

Clouds

Anybody watch Lost in Austen? Just curious.

Anyway, this really has nothing to do with writing, but today my attention was caught by this link on weather.com: 10 Spectacular Clouds. They were so cool! Spectacular is right. One of my favorite parts of flying is getting just above the clouds and seeing all the crazy-cool formations up close that you never get to see from down below. I love being right in the middle of them. I imagine frolicking in the clouds and sculpting them like beaten egg whites, or something. Maybe when I die I can do that. Just for a minute.

Some favorites from the slide show: lenticular, noctilucent (Lit up at night? Cool!) and nacreous, and the very eerie mammatus clouds.

Lost in Austen

I just wanted to share a literary treat in case you don't already know about it—a treat in video form and currently available on Hulu (although for who knows how long). It's a four-part miniseries called Lost in Austen. 

It tells the story of a modern-day woman, an avid fan of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, who changes places with Elizabeth Bennet and causes everything we know and love in the novel to hit the fan. People don't marry who they should and others marry who they shouldn't.

And George Wickham even turns out to be GOOD. He's likable and kind, though still a bit sneaky at times, and he always shows up just when he's needed. After a particularly helpful moment, the main character makes a whirring sound and says to herself as he's walking away, "Hear that sound, George? Duh-uh-uh-uh-uh. That's Jane Austen spinning in her grave like a cat in a tumble dryer."

There are other treats, like seeing sides of characters we've never seen. While Hugh Bonneville is always amazing, his Mr. Bennet has some faults, and it's refreshing to see Mrs. Bennet eventually gaining a little backbone. And we get to meet a few of Mr. Collins' equally revolting brothers.

Let me just say that there are probably some crass moments, but they were so British that I remained mostly ignorant of their real intent. So if you watch, keep that in mind. Besides that, the show is pretty funny and especially delightful if you've seen the five-hour BBC version with Colin Firth. Definitely a fun romp through Austen's England.

A Survey: Adult Voice vs. YA Voice

I am currently in the middle of trying to find an agent who wants to sell my manuscript of LITTLE SUN to a publisher. I started querying in late October, and, though I took a big long break over the holidays, I haven't had any takers yet. A couple responses have been form letters, but others have been personal and kind and even encouraging.

But one agent in particular was concerned that it is the mother's voice that begins LITTLE SUN in the prologue (the story is told from dual points of view) and thought we should first hear from the 15-year-old daughter (who starts Chapter 1). She said it is young adult fiction, after all. At first I disagreed, thinking that it wouldn't have mattered to me when I was a teenager (and thinking it ridiculous that my masterpiece could actually be improved upon), but then I really considered it and decided to rewrite the prologue a bit to see how I felt. And I still don't know. 

In the rewrite, the mother's voice still begins the book because I think it's important to start with the accident, but I shortened the prologue and took out the part about the daughter's birth so that we could get to her voice sooner. I really started to wonder if I only liked the part about her birth because I'm a mother and if maybe YA readers would, in fact, find it less accessible. The removal of the part about the daughter's birth is pretty much the only change.

And I still don't really know how I feel about it, so I thought I would put the question to you. You can answer in theory, about if this kind of thing in books matters to you (or mattered when you were younger), if it would or would not have been off-putting, or you can read for yourself. I made two new pages where you can read each version of the prologue and the first chapter:

Little Sun Intro

Little Sun Intro Rewrite

So please let me know what you think. I will appreciate any and all feedback. But if nothing else, maybe you can at least enjoy the sneak peak.